Chapter 463: Combat Training
After the foundational framework of discipline was forcibly established, physical and combat training bore down upon them with the crushing force of a landslide.
The training schedule was precise to the second, and sleep time was compressed to the absolute physiological limit.
Every day before dawn, the piercing assembly horn would cut through the camp. The candidates were required to finish gearing up within a stipulated time and embark on cross-country marches spanning dozens of kilometers, burdened with heavy stone locks or metal pillars.
Following that were endless obstacle courses, armed swims, dizzying high-altitude rappelling, and survival training in extreme environments such as intense heat, severe cold, vacuums, and toxic gas conducted within specialized chambers.
Their bodies were repeatedly pushed to the brink of collapse. Pale faces, muscle spasms, and continuous vomiting became the norm.
The nutrient solutions and physical therapy provided by the Adeptus Mechanicus merely maintained their physiological functions at the lowest threshold, ensuring they would not actually die, only to be pushed back into a deeper abyss of suffering after a brief recovery.
Combat skills training was equally brutal and highly efficient. They began to systematically learn the use of various standard-issue weapons—from the most basic combat knives and low-yield training bolters, to heavy bolters that required an extremely robust physique to handle, and finally to dangerous and precise plasma weapons and melta guns.
Sparring utilized unsharpened training weapons and basic protective gear, yet bone fractures, internal bleeding, and severe contusions still occurred frequently.
The instructors, veteran Black Templars of vast experience, stood by the sidelines like boulders. Their icy gazes swept over every sparring group. They would never halt any spar within a "reasonable" scope unless a clear, lethal danger presented itself.
Here, defeat meant not only immediate pain but also the strong possibility of missing crucial training nodes during the recovery period, ultimately leading to elimination.
Within this cruel crucible, the trajectories of three individuals were entirely distinct.
Kax felt as if he had returned to his familiar domain.
The brutal laws of survival in the underhive had bestowed upon him an instinctual intuition for violence.
In close-quarters combat training, his movements were as agile as a phantom. His strikes were tricky and ruthless, always able to precisely locate his opponent's weak points.
When learning weapon operations, he picked things up incredibly fast. Especially with weapons requiring a certain level of skill like the bolter, he could master its recoil control and firing rhythm in an exceedingly short time.
For the tactical movements demonstrated by the instructors, he could imitate them with near perfection after just one viewing. He could even perform almost instinctual, on-the-spot improvisations during practical sparring.
The speed of his progress was remarkable, as if the art of combat had long been etched into his genes, requiring only appropriate pressure to be unleashed.
However, his lone-wolf habits were completely exposed during team tactical drills that demanded tight coordination. He often ruined the overall formation by advancing too far ahead or ignoring synchronization signals, drawing harsh reprimands from the instructors and resentful glares from his teammates.
Alvaro, on the other hand, found that the aristocratic swordsmanship he had once taken pride in appeared flashy but impractical here.
During his first sparring session wielding a training combat knife, he was easily taken down by a simple, ferocious thrust from a mid-hive opponent. The humiliation and pain instantly snapped him awake.
But he did not sink into despair. The learning capacity and resource integration awareness endowed by his noble education began to play their part.
He carefully observed every detail of the instructors' demonstrations, earnestly recording the characteristics, advantages, disadvantages, and applicable scenarios of different weapons.
His precise perception of a plasma weapon's overload critical point, along with his rapid mastery of a melta gun's effective range and dispersion spread, even earned him a rare evaluation of "acceptable" from an instructor.
He viewed the training as a technical problem that had to be conquered, using his intellect to compensate for his lack of physical instinct and combat experience. Although his progress was not as dazzling as Kax's, it was steady and solid.
Grumm faced the most arduous adaptation process.
His long life in the mid-hive factories had molded his instinct to utilize strength for production and collaboration, not for slaughter.
The first time he pressed a training dagger against an "enemy's" throat, he displayed obvious hesitation. As a result, he was countered by his opponent, a sharp pain shooting through his ribs.
During live-fire weapon drills, watching the distant humanoid targets being shredded by bolter rounds made his stomach churn.
This instinctual repulsion toward the act of directly taking a life made every step of his early combat training a struggle.
But he did not give up.
He treated every sparring session and every shot fired as an operational process on the assembly line that absolutely had to meet the standard.
Relying on his extraordinary physical strength and endurance, he forced himself to repeat every tedious tactical movement until it formed muscle memory.
When he was knocked down during sparring due to hesitation, he would silently climb back up and adopt his fighting stance once more.
His progress was slow and agonizing, supported entirely by tenacious perseverance and the simple belief of executing orders to the very end. Sweat frequently soaked his training uniform, but the persistence in his eyes never extinguished.
Eliminations happened silently yet were omnipresent, just like the lingering damp air within the training camp.
Some utterly collapsed, unable to bear the steadily accumulating mental pressure. They attempted to scale the electrified razor wire in the dead of night; their figures flashed briefly under the searchlights before disappearing forever into the shadows outside the camp, leaving behind nothing but a brief silence during the instructors' morning roll call.
Some saw their bodily functions reach their limits, collapsing and failing to rise after a sixty-kilometer fully weighted cross-country march. With total cardiopulmonary failure, they were silently dragged away by standby servitors, much like clearing away a broken piece of training equipment.
On the weapon operation grounds, candidates whose reactions were consistently half a beat too slow would have their identification tags snatched off by the instructors on the spot. A cold sentence of "lacking combat aptitude" announced the end of their fate.
Inside the tactical deduction rooms, those who made fatal decision-making errors on the simulated battlefield three consecutive times would be labeled "lacking basic tactical thinking," left to dejectedly pack their pitifully meager belongings.
Sigismund would occasionally visit the training grounds in person to observe.
When a five-man squad abandoned an injured teammate to secure a favorable position during a simulated urban warfare drill, the Marshal of the Black Templars walked directly to the recording officer. Using his power-armored finger, he drew a glaring red cross over the designation numbers of every member of that squad.
"The Black Templars require sharp blades, but we will absolutely not tolerate a dagger thrust from behind." His deep voice echoed across the grounds, making every candidate shiver with dread.
At the same time, Magos Ryo's surveillance network blanketed the entire training process like an invisible spider web.
Thousands of sensors captured the heart rate, muscle fatigue, and neural reaction speed of every candidate in real-time. Every training score, every psychological evaluation, and even who they shared a table with in the mess hall or conversed with in the barracks, was converted into data streams and fed into his massive logical core.
He was searching for that perfect point of equilibrium: outstanding physical prowess must be paired with resilient willpower; combat instinct required the guidance of a tactical mind; and obedience to commands could not be allowed to stifle the leadership potential necessary to make decisive actions at critical moments.
The sweat on the training grounds had long evaporated, bloodstains were washed away, and tears were even less worth mentioning.
The number of candidates steadily decreased like grains of sand in an hourglass: three thousand one hundred and twenty-seven, two thousand four hundred, one thousand five hundred, eight hundred... Behind every number was a dream that had come to an abrupt halt.
When the three-month training cycle finally reached its end, the formation standing in the center of the training grounds had become strikingly sparse.
Ultimately, having passed all the rigorous assessments and achieved the optimal standard in every single training subject, only fifty individuals remained.
They stood in the afterglow of the setting sun, their training uniforms long torn to shreds, their exposed skin crisscrossed with old and new scars.
But their eyes were already completely different from three months ago. The bewilderment, fear, or rebelliousness they had when they first arrived had all faded away, replaced by a tranquility forged through a thousand hammer strikes. Like quenched steel blades, they concealed their edge yet harbored a hidden sharpness.
Their standing postures were as tall and straight as pines; every subtle movement demonstrated a sense of coordination and power borne of rigorous training.
These fifty individuals had become the Aspirants.
They were permitted to bathe, granted eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, and issued clean, neat temporary uniforms along with double-sized rations of food.
Yet, no one rejoiced over this. Everyone understood that this was nothing more than the calm before the storm.
The instructors remained tight-lipped regarding the upcoming arrangements, but this deliberate tranquility only deepened the unease within everyone's hearts.
They only knew that they had passed this phase of the trials, remaining entirely ignorant of the impending, fate-deciding final test.
The atmosphere in the camp was heavy and oppressive. Everyone was silently preparing themselves to face that unknown challenge that would undoubtedly alter the rest of their lives.